


where we're going

by nikkiRA



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Time Shenanigans, Time Travel, author displays clear misunderstanding of how infinity stones work, author talks out of her ass a whole hell of a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 23:54:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14925434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: “Sure it is,” Bucky says, and he opens his eyes, finally, smiling at Steve. “You only look at me like that when I’m dreaming.”Steve feels a tug in his stomach, but it’s not the stone, this time, it’s his world being flipped completely fucking upside down by the words Bucky is saying.“I’m always looking at you like this,” he says carefully. “You’re just not looking back.”“Stupid,” Bucky says, letting his eyes close again. “All I ever do is look at you. You’re all I fucking see, Stevie.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is OBVIOUSLY from back to the future, where we're going we don't need roads, because i am an idiot  
> also, look, i do not know a whole lot about the infinity stones, and i have not seen dr. strange, and i kind of just skimmed the wiki page, and honestly? honestly? i'm claiming artistic license lmao don't @ me

When the time comes, he doesn’t hesitate. None of them do, this broken group of people who have nothing left to lose. Half of the world is missing. There are no plans, no strategies. They fight to die.

When they find him, wallowing in his misery, wondering why achieving everything he’s ever wanted hasn’t made him happy, Steve doesn’t hesitate. Anger doesn’t fuel him, because he doesn’t feel anger any longer, just the emptiness inside of him, swallowing him up. He had been alone for so long and then he wasn’t and now he is again, and the two people who should be beside him have been taken away from him and he’s tired. So he doesn’t think, doesn’t care, grabs a hold of that wretched golden gauntlet and works his fingernails under one of the stones, tugging until his fingernails break and not stopping then. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, but if they can’t get this stupid thing off of Thanos, fine, he’ll take it apart on the bastard’s hand all the same.

It should be impossible, but when has that ever stopped him?

Around him he hears yelling, dim sounds of rage and pain and guilt and emptiness. Tony is beside him, something he never thought would happen again, but he carries the guilt of a child’s death on his soul and everything else kind of pales in comparison to that. He’s keeping the bastard occupied while Steve breaks himself apart, tugs at the stones that have ruined everything, these small, inconsequential gems that shouldn’t hold as much power as they do. If he can remove even one stone then the gauntlet won’t be invincible, technically, but the truth is he isn’t thinking, just lets his grief lead him forward, wants to tear Thanos apart with his bare hands, even if the plan makes no sense.

He pulls, and he pulls, and his fingernails are pulling back, but still he doesn’t stop, and then with a great resounding sound something comes loose and he stumbles back, a tiny stone held tightly in his bleeding hand, and Thanos looks at him the same way he looked at him before, when Steve held him off, man to man, because Steve Rogers never listened to common sense, has been fighting men twice his size for his entire life. He thrusts his hand out, to gloat, maybe, or to show Tony, or – something, but then there’s a feeling in his stomach like someone is dragging it up into his throat and the world spins, and he just has time to think, _what the hell else could he possibly do to me,_ before he is thrown off his feet.

* * *

When he opens his eyes, he is on his back, and he is in Brooklyn. He recognizes it the same way he recognizes his reflection in the mirror, but when he sits up and looks around him he can’t help but shakes his head, rub at his eyes, pinch himself, because this is not Brooklyn now, this is Brooklyn in the _thirties._

“What the hell,” he mutters, standing up. People move past him but don’t look at him, don’t look at his strange outfit, don’t look confused as to why a man just appeared in the middle of the street, and when he calls out, when he reaches out to tap a man on the shoulder, to ask him what – well, something, his fingers pass right through the man’s shoulder.

He opens his bleeding hand, suddenly understanding which godforsaken stone he had managed to grab. He holds it up, holds it out, tries to activate it again somehow, to get back to where he had come from, but it lies there in his hand like a glorified paper weight, and eventually he puts it in one of his pockets, wondering where he would be able to find something to bandage his hand with.

And then the world flips again, and he thinks this time he might be sick, because there –

“–know you’re gonna fight, but why d’you always gotta fight the biggest guy in the room?”

“Not my fault the biggest guys are usually the dumbest. Just look at you.”

Coming right toward him, it’s Bucky, and it’s _him,_ but it’s him before the serum, sixteen or so, maybe, and he is bloody and bruised, and it looks like his nose is broken, and he is leaning heavily against Bucky as he all but drags this younger Steve through the street.

And what can Steve – this Steve, the real Steve, not that the scrawny punk in front of him wasn’t real – what can he do except follow?

“Is that any way to talk to the guy who just saved your ass?”

Steve follows the pair down roads and alleys that he knows like the back of his hand, until they reach Steve’s place with his Ma, and Bucky sticks his head in quickly before hauling Steve through the door quickly.

“You’re damn lucky your Ma ain’t home, Rogers,” Bucky says as he drags Steve to his bedroom, pushing him down on the bed and rummaging in a drawer for bandages and peroxide. Steve watches as his younger self gingerly touches his nose and winces.

“I think I might have finally broken my nose,” he says thickly. Bucky rolls his eyes. Steve can’t help it, he reaches out, but his fingers pass through Bucky’s shoulder as if he wasn’t even there.

“Think you might’ve finally broken your head,” he mutters, kneeling down so he’s more on level with the Steve on the bed, and it’s –

It’s too _much,_ Steve fumbles for the stone in his pocket, grips it tightly, _take me somewhere else,_ he thinks, _anywhere but here,_ because he sees the gentle way Bucky washes the blood off of him, sees the way his younger self keeps watching every move, sees the subtle flinches when Bucky’s thumb accidentally skims across his lips, and it’s not because of the pain, and he knows that in a few minutes his Ma will get home, will find them in the bedroom like this, will give Steve the verbal lashing of a lifetime, and Bucky will stand up for him even though he had been saying the exact same things, earlier, _this guy was really asking for it, ma’am, you shoulda seen the way he was talking to that lady, you’d have been more upset if Steve here didn’t do anything._

“Take me somewhere else,” he says, and the ghosts in front of him don’t stir at his voice, but he feels sick to his stomach and the world spins again and –

* * *

But he knows as soon as he opens his eyes again that the stone had only half listened, because he’s somewhere else, sure, but he still isn’t home, still isn’t back in his time, and judging from the blond kid that’s curled into the fetal position in front of him, getting kicked repeatedly, he’s gone even farther back.

“That’s not what I _meant,_ ” he says, anxious, because he knows exactly what’s about to happen, and he’s not at all surprised when a rock flies past his head and hits the back of the bully’s head.

Johnny O’Hannigan turns around and glares at the newcomer, a boy of eight with a missing tooth and a glare that can and will scare the pants off people, another rock in his hand.

“Better watch where you throw that, Barnes.”

“You’re right. Wouldn’t want to hit your face and make you even uglier than you are now.”

Steve’s heart is beating erratically in his chest, and if he didn’t know better he’d say he was about to have a goddamn asthma attack for the first time in eighty fucking years. Johnny looks between Bucky and Steve, who hasn’t uncurled on the pavement, spits, then stalks off.

Bucky drops his rock and hurries towards Steve. “Hey, you all right?”

Steve finally lifts his head up from the ground, tears and dirt and blood staining his face and shirt, and glares weakly at Bucky.

“I coulda handled him,” he said, despite all evidence to the contrary. Bucky laughs in surprise.

“That was you handling him? What does it look like when you lose, then?”

Steve wipes his mouth and sits up, ignoring Bucky’s outstretched hand. Watching them now, older Steve could almost laugh at what a little shithead he was.

“Want me to walk you home?” Bucky asks, and Steve shakes his head.

“My Ma’s gonna kill me,” he says morosely. Bucky considers this.

“Come with me,” he says, tugging at Steve’s hand, and Steve follows him. It’s the first time he ever followed Bucky Barnes, and he never really stopped after that. The Steve that’s watching them wants to cry.

“Where?”

“My Dad’s at work and if we sneak in the back my Ma won’t know,” Bucky says patiently. “We might run into Becca but I got enough dirt on her that she won’t tell. We’ll get you cleaned up so your Ma won’t know.”

“My shirts ruined,” younger Steve points out.

“You can borrow one of mine.”

“Won’t fit.”

Bucky shoots him an irritated look. “Are you always so annoying?”

Young Steve grins. “Why d’you think I get beat up so much?”

Bucky grins back, then. “I’m Bucky,” he says, continuing to drag him down the street, and Steve care vaguely hear his younger self say, “Steve,” but Steve doesn’t follow, just stares down at the stone in his hand.

“What are you trying to do?” He asks it, as if it’s going to just start fucking talking back to him. He is unsurprised when it remains a stone, and unsurprised when it pulses once and then drags him off somewhere else.

* * *

He’s moved forward again, and now he’s standing on the front porch of his old place, watching Bucky, tall and gangly and barely thirteen, pound on the door repeatedly. Bucky hasn’t grown into his limbs, yet, looks like any other awkward kid on the cusp of puberty, but Steve distinctly remembers thinking that he was still so damn pretty, even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to think that.

Bucky knocks and knocks and knocks and eventually the door opens to reveal Sarah Rogers’ pinched face.

Steve lets out a sob at the sight of his mother. He wants to run forward, wants to hug her, wants to be small again so she can wrap him up in her arms, wants her to yell at him for fighting, wants his mother in a way you never really grow out of.

“James –”

“Please, Mrs. Rogers, you gotta let me see him.”

Sarah shakes her head. “He is very sick, James, I won’t have him getting riled up.”

“I won’t, I promise, I won’t do anything like that, I just wanna see him.”

Sarah runs a hand over his head, looks down at Bucky’s face, eager and scared and trying his best to seem neither. She sighs and opens the door, and Bucky and Steve follow her inside.

Sarah grabs Buck’s arm before he can head to Steve’s old room. “He is very ill, James. I need you to understand that. I need you to be prepared for that.”

Bucky only nods, understanding what she means. _This might be it_ lies unspoken between them.

Steve’s chest hurts, as if he’s remembering, phantom pains from a time so long ago.

Bucky creeps into Steve’s room. There is a bundle of blankets on the bed and a mop of blond hair sticking out the tops of the covers, and Bucky very carefully lies down on the bed, pressing a hand carefully to Steve’s forehead. The Steve in the bed stirs.

“Buck,” he says, and the Steve watching them knows, in a way he can’t understand, that he hadn’t been aware at this point, that he hadn’t known Bucky was beside him, that he was just calling out for him.

“M’here, Stevie,” Bucky says quietly.

“Where’ve you been,” Steve says weakly from the bed. Bucky impatiently wipes at his face, where tears have started to fall.

“Had to fight all the bastards at school while you’re not around to do it,” he says, attempting a laugh. “Gotta protect your reputation.”

Steve wheezes out what might be a laugh. “Don’t let them hit your face,” he says. “You’re ugly enough.”

Bucky lowers his head so their foreheads are touching. “Shh, Steve, don’t talk so much.”

“Haven’t talked in three days,” Steve says, but he stops after that, whether because he listens to Bucky – unlikely – or he was just too tired. Bucky settles down more, curling up on the bed beside Steve, pressing his forehead against Steve’s shoulder.

“Enough,” Steve says to the stone. “I don’t need to be here.” He knows what happens – he gets better, because he always did, and Bucky adamantly refuses to leave even when Sarah threatens to throw him over her shoulder and drag him out, and Steve wakes up a couple days later, head clear for the first time in a week, to find Bucky drooling on his shoulder, and his mother, very clearly trying not to smile, says that the two of them were gonna send her to an early grave.

It was funny, then, when Steve had thought his mother would live forever. The memory is not as funny now, when he knows that an early grave does, in fact, await Sarah Rogers.

* * *

He’s almost getting used to tug in his stomach, now. He feels an urge to throw the stone against the wall. _What do you want from me,_ he wants to shout. _I don’t want to be here._

This time he is in the shitty apartment he had shared with Bucky, and he is so tired, and so drained, and he sees Bucky’s sleeping form in the bed across the room and Steve can’t help but cross over and lie down beside him. Bucky looks 24 or so, and Steve almost has a goddamn heart attack which Bucky shifts and throws an arm over his chest.

“Buck –” No one else had been able to touch him – Bucky had never been able to touch him before. He shouldn’t be able to do this, to curl into Steve’s shoulder and sigh contentedly as his fingers skim across Steve’s stomach.

“Wha’s wrong with you?” Bucky slurs, half asleep. “Feels like there’s two of you.”

Steve laughs breathlessly, turning over before he can think better of it, so Bucky and he are both on their sides facing each other. Bucky’s eyes are closed, still, hand clutching at the fabric of Steve’s uniform. He sees Bucky frown at the unfamiliar material, at the way it fits so snugly against Steve’s body when every piece of clothing at the time had hung off Steve’s skinny frame.

“This is a weird dream,” he mutters. Steve brings his hand up to cup Bucky’s face before he can convince himself not to.

“It’s not a dream.”

“Sure it is,” Bucky says, and he opens his eyes, finally, smiling at Steve. “You only look at me like that when I’m dreaming.”

Steve feels a tug in his stomach, but it’s not the stone, this time, it’s his world being flipped completely fucking upside down by the words Bucky is saying.

“I’m always looking at you like this,” he says carefully. “You’re just not looking back.”

“Stupid,” Bucky says, letting his eyes close again. “All I ever do is look at you. You’re all I fucking see, Stevie.”

“Bucky,” he says, panic creeping into his voice. “I lost you again. I keep losing you.”

Bucky’s grip on him tightens. “What’re you talkin’ about?” He says thickly. “You ain’t ever getting rid of me.” Bucky shifts closer, burying his head in Steve’s chest. “Still don’t get why you’re so damn big. And hot. You got a fever again?” He tries to sit up, blinking sleep out of his eyes, shaking his head, and Steve watches miserably as he looks around him, looks directly at Steve without seeing him, as if only the moments between asleep and awake had let them be together. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up, padding over to the other bed.

“Hey Steve?” He says, crawling in beside the other Steve. Steve mutters something and curls into him, and Bucky smiles against his hair, and Steve tries to punch the wall, cursing when his hand goes right through it.

* * *

The stone continues to take him, dragging him through time against his will, but he never gets Bucky half asleep again. He sees his Ma’s funeral, how Bucky had held him for hours while Steve sobbed into his shoulder, saw disastrous double date after disastrous double date, saw Bucky across the ocean by himself, writing letters to the Steve back home. Had to relive rescuing him from Hydra that first time, and it’s worse, now, knowing that whatever they had done to him in that short amount of time had kept him alive enough for them to keep him completely. He sits against the side of a train and sobs as he sees himself reaching out desperately, sees Bucky clinging, and he wants to scream, _farther, you almost have him, don’t let him fall, you don’t know what they’ll do to him –_ but he watches as Bucky falls, again, and he resists the urge to fling the stupid fucking stone after him.

“What do you want me to _do!”_ He yells. “Take me back, I don’t want to see this anymore!”

The stone doesn’t listen.

For a while there is no Bucky. For a while there is Peggy, and his heart breaks at the sight of her, sits beside her as she talks to him on that plane, watches the tears slide down her face, and he wants to wipe them away. “You deserve so much,” he tells her thickly, but she can’t hear him, just keeps saying his name over and over. Then there is Howard, and Tony, small and brilliant and vying for his father’s attention, and every mention of the name Captain America causes Steve to flinch at the anger and betrayal and sadness that flicks across Tony Stark’s face. This Howard was not the man he knew, or maybe it was, and he just didn’t pay enough attention. Then there is Sam, and Steve wants to reach for him, too, for the only person he had met in this century who really seemed to actually _get_ him in a way the others didn’t, and that’s another death on Steve’s hands, as he watches Sam with Riley, watches Sam at the VA, watches the first time they met. By the time the stone takes him back to Bucky he has run out of tears, both for what he’s lost and for the fact that he’s stuck in this miserable time loop and has no way of getting out of it, because no one can see him, no one knows he’s there.

The stone drops him off in a Hydra base and Steve’s entire body freezes over. “I know him,” Bucky says, except it’s not Bucky, it’s the Asset, cold eyes staring ahead and not seeing. “The man on the bridge. I know him.”

And then those bastards wipe him again, and when Bucky screams Steve screams, too, a sound wrenched from his throat, and he wants to kill them all, kill everyone in this room, but no matter how often he tries to grab onto them, to choke the life out of them, to grab the guns from their sides, his fingers pass right through. He loses it, then, Bucky’s screams echoing in the emptiness inside his head, and he takes the stone and throws it, wants it as far from him as possible. But even as he throws it he feels the tugging in his stomach, and when he opens his eyes again it’s right back in his hand.

He drops to the ground, defeated, looks up to see field and grass and a familiar looking hut, and he stumbles forward, finds Bucky curled up peacefully on his cot, and collapses into bed beside him.

“Buck,” he says, and when he can bury his face in Bucky’s hair he lets out a relieved sob. Bucky stirs, and it’s a testament to the security of his life in Wakanda that he doesn’t freak out, doesn’t lash out, doesn’t spring from the bed ready for a fight, just turns over and pushes his nose into Steve’s neck.

“What’re you doin’ here,” he says sleepily. “Thought you weren’t coming ‘til next week.”

And suddenly Steve knows.

“I need you to do me a favour,” he says, pulling back slightly so he can look Bucky in the face. Bucky blinks blearily at him, and Steve has a very thin line to walk here, between keeping Bucky asleep enough that he sees him and awake enough to remember. “And I need you to remember, okay? Bucky, this is serious.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, moving back into Steve’s chest. “Calm down, you’re gonna give yourself an asthma attack.”

“Bucky, you need to tell him to go for the head. Thor. You need to tell Thor to go right for the head, okay? I need you to remember.”

“Mhm…”

“Bucky _please.”_

“Go for the head, yeah, pal, I got it…”

Steve sighs and runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair. Bucky wraps his arm around him and nestles in closer, and Steve thinks that maybe he’ll die here, and he’d be okay.

But he doesn’t.

* * *

He wakes up to someone shouting his name and a familiar hand on his forehead. His eyelids are heavy, and when he finally opens them, he sees Bucky kneeling over him, the worried lines on his face smoothing out when he sees Steve’s eyes are open.

“Jesus Hell, Rogers,” he says. “You can’t just go around dropping like that for no good reason.”

“Bucky?”

“Yeah, you mook, who else would it be?”

Steve takes a quick recap of his surroundings – they’re in Wakanda, and Bucky is awake and knows he’s there, which means whatever weird shit the time stone had forced him through must be done – but this isn’t where he was, not where he started, this is the battlefield from six months ago when he lost everything –

“ _Bucky,”_ he says, reaching up and grabbing him before he can really think it through, yanking him down so he can press their lips together, hand threading through Buck’s hair. He kisses him for five beats before he pulls away in horror. “Shit – I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that without permission, shouldn’t have touched you like that –”

Bucky is looking at him like he’s a fucking maniac. “You’ve had permission to kiss me since the moment I fucking met you, Rogers,” he says slowly. “But there’s sort of a crowd and there’s _definitely_ a goddamn war going on right now.”

It’s then that Steve sits up and realizes the people around him, Thor and Nat and Bruce and –

“ _Sam,”_ he says, jumping to his feet and running at his friend, who puts his hands up in front of his chest.

“Woah, woah, woah, you’re not gonna kiss me too, are you –”

But he just grabs him in a bone crushing hug, and after a moment Sam pats him awkwardly on the back.

“Why do I feel like I’m missing something?”

It’s then that Steve sees the headless body on the ground, and he is able to meet Thor’s eyes.

“We have a lot to talk about,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i really grappled on whether i should end this on this vaguely uplifting, totally ignoring science and canon ending, or if i should post the complicated, bullshit explanation that i pulled out of my ass, so i'm doing both. end it here if you like, i'm posting the end part in a separate chapter so if you read it and you're like 'wow nicole should have quit while she was ahead' (assuming i was ever ahead at all) then you can pretend it doesn't exist


	2. Chapter 2

It takes them a while to clean up the mess, to get everyone back together, to get Tony and the others back, and even then it’s bittersweet. Thor keeps looking to his side, as if expecting his brother to be there, and Steve learns of Gamora, Thanos’ daughter, someone else he couldn’t save. He sees Thor’s sad eyes and he grips Bucky’s hand tighter beneath the table.

“You’re telling me you went all Back to the Future and somehow managed to sort this whole thing out? Like goddamn Marty McFly?”

Tony seems to have reverted back to sarcasm in an attempt to act like the past two years haven’t happened, and Steve lets him.

“I don’t know what happened,” he says for the thousandth time. “All I know is I ripped the stone out of the gauntlet –”

“Idiot,” Bucky mutters fondly.

“And then I found myself back in Brooklyn, and I kept being dragged to different points in time. I don’t know why.”

At this, they all turn to Strange, who has his fingers steepled and his head down in thought. He looks up at the silence.

“It appears you must have… accessed the power of the stone, somehow,” he says unhelpfully. “I am unsure how, or why. Even just holding it should have burned you up. The power should have consumed you. To hold it, let alone to _use_ it, should have been impossible.”

Bucky snorts. “Steve’s punched out Hitler over 200 times. He could never be beat down by a piece of jewellery.”

“That is not nearly as helpful as you might think it is,” Tony says sharply. Bucky looks back, almost bored.

“How many times have you punched Hitler?”

Tony opens his mouth, but Strange interrupts, and Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand, a silent plea to _shut up._

“How you managed to harness only a fraction of the power, as well, enough to send you back through time but not enough to make you fully corporeal… I can’t understand it. Obviously I never expected to understand every aspect of the stone, but this is something completely different. But even then, for someone inexperienced to use it, it could have resulted in catastrophe… you could have been stuck in a time loop, could have disrupted the continuum, could have died or even erased yourself out of existence. And yet none of that happened.”

“Why did it send me to all those places?”

“ _It_ didn’t. _You_ did. The stone is not alive, Captain, it is a tool – an incredibly dangerous, powerful tool, but one nonetheless. It is power that can be harnessed. It didn’t send you there because it wanted you there, or because the fates intervened or any other such rubbish. Wherever you ended up was because you wanted to be there. So tell me – why did you want to be there?”

“You’re really asking me why I wanted to be back home?”

Strange nods at this, seems to concede. “This wasn’t divine intervention, Captain. It wasn’t the stone acting to try and stop Thanos – it wasn’t even you acting to try to stop Thanos. You got stuck in a time loop that should have ended in disaster, and instead you used it to pass a message onto your friend and end the war. I am… impressed.”

“Message? What message?”

He doesn’t know how Strange seems to know when no one else does, but beside him, Bucky speaks up. “Tell Thor to go for the head,” he says. “I had a dream a couple months ago – thought it was a dream, at least, but you told me to tell Thor to go for the head. I didn’t know what the fuck you meant until he showed up here.”

“And he did, indeed, tell me to go for the head,” Thor said. “Said it was the utmost importance.”

“Originally,” Steve said, hand tightening on Bucky’s. “Originally, you went for his chest. For a, uh. Slow death. But it gave him time to snap his fingers.”

Everyone looks shaken at this, Thor especially, who looks down at his hands.

“But playing with time,” Shuri said, speaking slowly. “How do we know that Captain Rogers did not do something that changed our world? Meddling with time, could it not have impacted our world today? How do we know this is the right timeline?”

“Ignoring the fact that he could interact with no one other than Mr. Barnes, and only when he was half asleep, it seems unlikely that he impacted anything other than Mr. Barnes’ mental state –”

“He impacted that a long goddamn time ago.”

“But more importantly,” Strange continues, looking solemn. “I ran through the possibilities of this war. All fourteen million of them. In all of those, there was only one outcome where we were victorious. This is the original state, I am sure of it.”

“So I’m not going to find out that, like, there’s no such thing as dogs anymore, right?”

Strange gives Peter Parker a dry look. “I assure you, there are still dogs.”

“Why did it stop?” Steve asks. “Why did it bring me back here, and not to where I was originally?”

“Because where you were originally no longer exists,” Strange says simply. “By telling Thor to go straight for Thanos’ head, the future where he eliminated half the universe and the rest of you fought against him again no longer happened. Instead it let you go here.”

“My head hurts,” Sam says. “Remember when we just had to punch people? I miss that.”

“Wanna relive that now, Wilson?” Bucky asks sardonically. Sam grins.

“You think I could ever be afraid of anyone who looks like they stepped out of a L’Oréal commercial?”

“Is there any way,” Thor interjects, and the grief in his voice causes them all to pause, “Any way that – that the others –” He does not finish, cannot finish, but they understand. Loki, Gamora, all of Asgard – he was asking if they could be saved. Steve is happy that the rest of the people at the table have enough tact not to say anything about Loki trying to kill them all multiple times – Thor’s grief was enough.

“Playing with time is –”

“No,” someone else speaks up, one of the newcomers, another Peter, Steve thinks – “No, I don’t want to hear some mumbo jumbo bullshit about how playing with time is dangerous. Captain America just went on a nice trip down memory lane to save his boyfriend, so I don’t want to hear any bullshit warnings about how we shouldn’t use the stones. There has to be a way. There _is_ a way, and we’re gonna find it.”

Strange blinks, and then, oddly, looks at Tony. Tony nods.

“It’s definitely up for discussion. But, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m _famished._ Seriously, absolutely starved. Anyone up for some food? Cap?”

It might just be the shittiest olive branch out there, but it’s still an olive branch. Steve looks over at T’Challa.

“You got any good shawarma here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr @aravenlikeawritingdesk please don't come and explain to me how infinity stones work


End file.
